


Tell me where you're hiding out

by StrikerEureka



Series: Loved you from the start [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Knotting, M/M, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Misunderstandings, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9216437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerEureka/pseuds/StrikerEureka
Summary: Yuri has kept his status as an omega hidden. When Otabek stumbles upon it, while Yuri is staying with him, it threatens to cause a rift between the two. Otabek reveals a well-kept secret of his own.Otabek opens the door wider and steps into the hallway. He tugs Yuri’s hood up over his head and cups both sides of his neck for a moment before he stands aside.“Safe flight, Yurochka,” Otabek says quietly.Yuri looks at him a moment before he gathers his suitcase and descends the stairs. Otabek watches him disappear from sight. He stands in the hallway until his toes go numb with cold.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toboldlyfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toboldlyfly/gifts).



> I don't know anything about figure skating so there are only minimal references to it in the story. Terrible, I know. Any mistakes are my own; let me know if anything sticks out or needs tagging. For the sake of erring toward caution, they do not have sex. The tag is earned though, I assure you.

Otabek isn’t sure what wakes him. He has forever been a sound sleeper, even more so in the winter, when the nights are longer and darker and colder. He opens an eye and waits for his sight to adjust, too tired to lift his head from the pillow. He waits to see if whatever woke him makes itself known.

His first thought is that it’s Flura, but nudging his own head up shows the cat is sound asleep on the other pillow, nose hidden by a mass of blonde hair. The apartment is otherwise silent, nothing but the ambient background noise of traffic far below and the brush of snow against the window on the far wall.

Next to him, Yuri shifts in his sleep, his leg drawing up until his knee is pressed to Otabek’s hip in a way that is far from comfortable. He slides his hand down, beneath the covers, and nudges it away, but Yuri lets out a stubborn sound and pushes it back harder. 

“Yura,” Otabek murmurs, slipping his hand under Yuri’s shirt to touch the small of his back. 

Yuri makes a protesting noise and turns his head away on the pillow. Flura opens her eyes and glares at Otabek. “What?” he whispers at her. She tucks her face back into Yuri’s hair and goes still again. Prickly little thing.

Otabek rubs the dip of Yuri’s spine with his thumb, skin warm and soft under his fingertips. Yuri still doesn’t move and Otabek shifts away with a sigh, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. He feels annoyingly awake now and he could use a piss. He glowers at the pair still sleeping away in blissfully unaware comfort in his bed as he gets to his feet. 

The clock on the microwave shows 2:49am as he passes and pads barefoot into the bathroom. He closes the door quietly and fumbles his way through the dark to the toilet, not wanting to blind himself with the light. 

He feels restless and itchy under his skin, not eager to get back into bed and possibly wake Yuri by tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable again. Yuri has moved in his absence, turned on his side to face where Otabek had been lying only a minute or two before, body curled up and sheets twisted around his knees, the cat still wrapped around the top of his head.

He looks his age now, face smooth and fair, his usual frown absent and the downturn of his brows lifted. He’s freshly sixteen, not even a week of it under his belt, and his youth looks good on him. Even if Yuri will argue until the sun comes up that he’s a fully-fledged adult now. 

Otabek doesn’t deny it, but this boy lying in his bed, now, is the one who had conned him into getting Flura. He’s the soft-cheeked boy who had shown up at his door, two days before his birthday, and declared St. Petersburg too dull a place to host his coming of age. He’s the boy who Otabek had offered an escape from his fans all those months ago, looking frightened and bewildered in an alleyway. 

Yuri is a man, studied and disciplined, passionate and so terribly talented that it makes Otabek’s chest ache. But here and now, this is his friend, vulnerable and real. This is what Otabek alone gets to see. 

“You’re being a creep,” Yuri grumbles from the bed without opening his eyes.

Otabek allows himself a small smile and steps back into the room. His apartment is a studio, a bit larger than the average but still small and enough for him. He’s never much had a need for space or had many things with which to fill it. Yuri had taken it all in without a word, tossing his bag down beside the door and dragging his suitcase over to the far wall, beside the bed, and made himself at home. It’s enough for Otabek and it makes some dormant, dominant part of him swell with pride at being able to provide and satisfy Yuri’s basic needs. 

He feels that same notion scratching at the inside of his belly as he approaches the bed and lowers himself to the mattress again. He quashes it without acknowledgement. Yuri yawns and kicks his feet with a groan, untangling himself from the covers and making Flura meow and jump off the pillow to go find a place to sleep that doesn’t move.

Otabek straightens the mass of mismatched blankets that cover his bed while Yuri waits, rubbing his arms against the cold of the room. 

“Hurry up,” he grouches, although there’s too much whine in it for it to be anything more than a complaint. 

Otabek takes great care to make a show of covering Yuri up and tucking the blankets behind his back. But Yuri just nods his approval at the gesture and waits for Otabek to settle on his back before he crowds into his space and settles under his arm. Yuri’s cheek rests against his shoulder and Otabek feels his jaw pop when he yawns again.

Yuri worms his cold fingers under the hem of his shirt and tucks them under his side. Otabek doesn’t complain, just shifts a bit and goes still again. He holds Yuri’s elbow with one hand and scratches at his scalp with the other, listening to him practically purr under the attention.

It’s then that Otabek smells it. Something too sweet in Yuri’s scent, something new and out of place. He lifts his head from the pillow to nose into his hair and breathe deeply.

“Stop,” Yuri complains, shifting around under him again. “Go to sleep.”

“I think you’re getting sick,” Otabek murmurs, settling his head back against the pillow again. If Yuri is going to lie on top of him, he’s not going to be able to move around, so he tries to make himself content to stare at the ceiling. 

“Am not.”

“Your scent is off,” Otabek tells him, trailing his blunt nails over the back of Yuri’s neck, brushing at his hairline. 

Yuri seems to go strangely still but his breathing has picked up a bit. His scent sours almost imperceptibly with what Otabek knows is fear. He’s never smelled it on Yuri before, only anxiety, which is similar but not quite the same. He rubs harder at Yuri’s neck and tries to make himself smell comforting. 

It’s not easy, something he’s not quite sure if he’s actually pulling off, or if it’s entirely in his head. He’s heard that a beta can’t change its scent but he tries regardless. 

Yuri relaxes again, after a moment of tension and curls more into his side, making himself smaller and tucking them together more tightly.

The air of fear bleeds out of Yuri’s scent, as quickly as it came on, and his breathing starts to slow. Flura hops back up on the bed and tests out the blankets covering Yuri’s side. She, apparently, finds it stable enough because she crawls up to settle on Yuri’s hip. She looks at Otabek in the dark and Otabek looks back; she closes her eyes at him, purring quietly and kneading one of her paws – claws and all – into Yuri’s side, padded by the covers.

Otabek still isn’t tired, but Yuri’s scent is familiar and calming and he finds himself relaxing, even though something is still niggling around in his belly, telling him that something is off. He closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing and, eventually, he drifts off.

 

\--

 

Yuri doesn’t act as though anything has changed in the morning. He wakes early and pokes at Otabek’s cheek until he cracks his eyes open and glares down at Yuri’s furrowed brow. 

“You’re a terrible houseguest,” Otabek grumbles without feeling, not yet making a move to get up. Flura has vanished again but Yuri hasn’t shifted much in the night. Yuri is still pressed up under his arm and trapping one of Otabek’s legs between both of his. 

He looks expectant but he rolls his eyes and flops over onto his back at Otabek’s words, taking the covers with him. 

“You’re a rude host.”

The cold air of his apartment sends goosebumps crawling across his arms. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, pausing a moment to stretch until his back pops. 

“Come on, old man,” Yuri groans. “I’m hungry.” 

Otabek waves him off and makes his way into the bathroom to brush his teeth, nudging up the thermostat as he goes.

When he comes out, the curtains have been pushed open to reveal a gray morning in the city. Snow swirls heavily, pattering softly against the window, and Otabek shivers involuntarily. The smell of coffee draws him into the kitchen where Yuri leans against the counter, watching it brew into a single cup. 

He’s wearing one of Otabek’s sweaters, the one with his surname printed across the shoulders in bold, yellow letters. His stomach twists at the sight, his entire body flushing hot.

Yuri jerks upright from where he was relaxing and hands the steaming mug to Otabek. Yuri prefers tea and he hurriedly turns away to busy himself with making himself a cup. Yuri’s scent spikes with anxiety so Otabek thanks him quietly and takes it back into the main room to sit on his bed. 

He has only just begun to worry about Yuri’s strange behavior, when the other pads back into the room and climbs up onto the bed, tucking his feet under one of the blankets and sipping at his tea. Otabek can smell the honey in it. 

Yuri sits close and Otabek rests a tentative hand on his knee. Yuri allows it and Otabek’s shoulders loosen a bit as the tension seeps out. 

“What do you want to do today?” he asks, taking a too-hot sip of his coffee. It’s strong and black, and scalding hot, just like he likes.

Yuri glances at the gusting snow outside and shakes his head. “I want to relax with you before I have to go home.”

Otabek’s eyebrows draw up. Yuri hadn’t announced himself more than calling from the airport upon his arrival to ask for his address, and he certainly hasn’t discussed leaving. It’s an unpleasant feeling to realize that he intends to go back to St. Petersburg soon. Otabek looks down at the mug in his hands. 

It’s been eight mornings now, exactly, that Otabek has woken to Yuri in his bed. Seven nights of contented, easy sleep (before last night, anyway) where Yuri has kept his blankets warm, snuggled up against his side. It’s been a calm week of light, morning workouts and Yuri helping him stretch further than he wants to by swearing at him and calling him old and pushing him deep enough into position that it takes his breath away. It’s been a week of free skating together, just the two of them, with Yuri showing off for him alone. It’s been nice. Having Yuri in his space is nice.

He has never been so close to someone he’s not related to, and even then, it’s never been so easy.

But now Yuri is clearly planning to pack up and head out soon. The idea sends something anxious scratching around inside of him. He takes another drink of his coffee before he stands up again.

“Breakfast?”

Yuri looks up at him, eyes fever-bright. He stares at Otabek a moment before nodding and busying himself with his tea again. Yuri makes no requests, trusting him to prepare something simple and easy for them, though he remains oddly quiet while Otabek makes them lamb sausage and scrambled eggs. 

They eat on Otabek’s unmade bed, bare feet tucked into disheveled blankets and plates balanced on their thighs. Yuri’s knee stays pressed against his own throughout and Otabek preens silently and inwardly at the contentment Yuri exudes after he eats.

 

\--

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yuri shouts, slamming the controller in his hands against the mattress. Otabek expertly plucks it from his hand before he can do something foolish like hurl it at the television on the low stand at the foot of the bed.

Yuri rolls onto his side and buries his face in the pillow he’s been using and screams. 

Otabek turns off the system and sets the controller down on the floor before he leans up on his elbow, facing Yuri’s back.

“Yura,” he admonishes when Yuri shirks his hand on his shoulder.

“Beka,” Yuri mimics back with a sneer in his voice.

Otabek huffs a laugh and ruffles his hair until Yuri is batting at his hands. He uses the distraction to pull Yuri in against his chest and hold him there. Yuri seethes, body running hot and his posture agitated, but Otabek hums quietly at him until he settles and goes limp with a dramatic sigh.

It could be minutes or hours before Yuri turns in his grip and buries his face in Otabek’s throat, because time slips away like sand through his fingers when Yuri is complacent and close like this. He ruffles Yuri’s hair again, gentler this time, soothing until Yuri nudges a knee between his thighs and settles in.

“When will you go?” Otabek asks. He doesn’t want Yuri to leave. He wants him right here, like this, always. It isn’t right, he knows, demanding so much of his time. Keeping him from his Grandfather. Otabek swallows his shame and presses his face into Yuri’s soft hair.

“Tomorrow, maybe. Can’t stay forever,” Yuri tells him, though he sounds as enthusiastic as Otabek feels at the prospect of him leaving. 

“You could stay,” Otabek says quietly. Flura hops quietly onto the foot of the bed and stalks her way up toward them; she curls up at the back of Yuri’s neck and Otabek scratches at her head. She purrs like a freight train.

“Honestly,” Otabek goes on, when Yuri says nothing, “I like having you here.”

Yuri shrugs. “I like being here,” he mumbles, lips brushing against Otabek’s throat while he speaks. 

Nothing more follows and Otabek makes himself swallow the words on his tongue.

 

\--

 

Otabek comes back from getting his mail to find the window cracked open and Yuri perched on the sill. He carefully raises a cigarette to his lips and takes a drag. His cheeks hollow and the cherry sparks bright red. At this distance, Otabek can’t hear the paper crackle, but he imagines that he can. Yuri exhales smoke through his nose, looking like a little, blonde dragon, and it drifts out the window.

Otabek drops the meager stack of envelopes on the dresser as he passes and comes to stand behind Yuri. 

Yuri ignores him, blinking tiredly and carrying on as though he’s too distracted to notice Otabek beside him. He raises his hand again, fingers thin and elegant, looking ugly with a cigarette filter pressed between them.

Otabek plucks it from his hand and flicks it out the window before closing it.

Yuri stares at him, deadpan, not saying a word. His hair is braided on both sides and tied together behind his head, making his face look harsher than usual.

“Filthy habit for an athlete to have,” he says, patting Yuri on the chest. “You need your lungs to compete.”

Yuri rolls his eyes but launches himself onto Otabek’s bed, twisting around until he’s on his back with his shirt rucked up, baring his belly and the sharp cut of his hips. He throws his arms over his head and closes his eyes, turning his face into his own bicep.

“I’m hungry,” he says. “Feed me.”

Otabek wraps his cold fingers around Yuri’s toes to hear him yelp. He catches the pillow Yuri launches at his head and tosses it back. He’d like to say he can’t believe this skinny, little brat is reigning GPF gold medal winner, but he couldn’t disparage Yuri’s talent even in his own thoughts.

He makes potato and onion pierogi like his mother makes and brings them to Yuri in bed.

 

\--

 

Yuri sleeps, curled up with the cat, and Otabek makes himself get up. His laundry needs doing and he can hardly send Yuri home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes for his Grandfather to take care of. 

He covers Yuri with another blanket and then sets about sorting his things out of his own. Yuri is still small, his clothes easily identifiable from Otabek’s own, but they have managed to get everywhere in his small apartment. There are socks under the bed and Russian National Team zip ups hanging on doorknobs, shoes kicked off into all corners of the room, and bits of everything else scattered through the bathroom and kitchen.

Otabek folds Yuri’s clothes into a pile beside his own to take down to his building’s laundry and sets about tidying his things in the bathroom. There’s a niggling voice in his head telling him to stop, but he knows that he can’t keep Yuri here, no matter how nice it’s been to let one of the few people he trusts into his home. He avoids his own eyes in the mirror and turns off the light.

It’s still snowing outside as it gets dark, and Otabek thinks longingly of his motorcycle in storage. He can’t wait for spring. Can’t wait to be able to walk outside without freezing his fingers off. He can’t wait to skate competitively again.

Yuri hasn’t moved since he left, so he tries to be quiet. He grabs Yuri’s backpack to set aside for easy packing, and upends it onto the floor. 

Otabek curses quietly to himself and squats to gather up everything that has spilled out. And he freezes, hand outstretched. Over Yuri’s suppressants. 

That’s what they are, no mistaking it. He’s seen them before, knows what the small compact looks like. But he hadn’t known. Yuri never said. It’s not possible.

“What are you doing?” Yuri’s voice startles him and he falls back, catching himself on his hand, the backpack still clutched in his fingers. Yuri’s eyes flick between Otabek and the floor and they go wide. “What are you _doing_?” Yuri cries, jolting to his knees and stumbling out of bed. Otabek scrambles back as Yuri crashes to the floor beside him.

He snatches for Otabek’s hand and he realizes that he’d picked up Yuri’s suppressants. He relinquishes them immediately and Yuri clutches them to his chest. 

Yuri’s face is red, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. “You went through my things?” he demands.

“No—“ Otabek tries, shaking his head, “Yuri, no, I—“

“You had no right!” he shouts, eyes going glassy and wet.

Otabek pushes himself to his knees and Yuri stumbles to his feet. Otabek stays where he is. “Yuri, I swear, I didn’t. I was trying to get your things organized for you.” 

The plastic in Yuri’s hand cracks audibly under the pressure of his fingers and Otabek pushes himself to his feet. He doesn’t mean to loom, not that he’s much taller than Yuri anyway, but he feels it when Yuri tries to shrink back and is blocked by the bed. He grips Yuri’s wrist and tries to pry his fingers open with the other hand.

“You’ll cut yourself,” he pleads, thinking how stupid a protestation it is even as the words leave his mouth. “Yuri, I don’t _care_ ,” he rasps.

“You weren’t supposed to know!” Yuri yells, head tilted up to spit the words right at him. “You had no right!”

“I _know_!” Otabek shouts back. “Yuri, please.” He wrenches the splintered plastic from Yuri’s grip and tosses it onto the bed, taking Yuri’s head in both of his hands before he can turn to grab for it. “I don’t care. I don’t care.”

“I care,” Yuri rasps, voice wavering even as his eyes get colder. “No one knows. If you tell anyone—“ 

Otabek shakes his head, still holding Yuri’s between his palms. He swipes at the dampness on Yuri’s cheeks with his thumbs. “Never. I would never.”

Yuri stares at him, betrayal and the hot flush of embarrassment staining his cheeks. Otabek is sure that he’s never felt worse in his life. No loss on the ice has ever felt this terrible. He doesn’t know what to say or do to make this better. He’s never wished so strongly that he could rewind time. If he had never picked up Yuri’s bag, never spilled its contents, if he had just let Yuri pack his own things.

If, if, if.

But he did, and now Yuri is pulling away from him, looking anywhere but at his face. He starts to hastily gather his things, shoving the broken compact holding his suppressants away into the bottom of his backpack.

“Yuri,” Otabek says quietly, breathing around the muddled mess of scents Yuri is emitting right now. Yuri doesn’t still and Otabek doesn’t touch him, certain that it would be taken as aggressive and unwanted right now. 

He tries again.

“Yurochka.” Yuri hesitates with his back to him, going still. Flura meows quietly from the foot of the bed, watching the two of them. “I don’t care that you’re an omega,” he says, the word making Yuri’s spine go stiff.

The silence between them stretches, horrible and long. Finally, Yuri looks at him over his shoulder, his face drawn and his eyes sad. 

“I care,” Yuri tells him quietly, voice hoarse in his throat. “It’s part of me. I care. I’d hoped you were different.”

Yuri moves then, packing up his things and phoning his Grandfather. Otabek sits at the foot of his bed with his head in his hands, unmoving and unspeaking. The cat rubs herself against his back for a minute, but then hops off the bed to wander into the kitchen. 

He has never fucked anything up so badly in his life.

 

\--

 

It’s hours of awkward silence between them after Yuri had made arrangements for a flight back to St. Petersburg. Otabek stayed on the bed, alternating between pulling at his own hair and rubbing angrily at his face, while Yuri sat on the floor between his bag and his suitcase, knees pulled up to his chest and staring at his phone.

It isn’t until Yuri rises, saying he’s called for an uber, that Otabek realizes that if he lets Yuri walk out now, he will never be allowed to fix this. 

He stumbles to his feet and Yuri freezes, looking at him through the fringe of his hair. 

“I care,” he says suddenly. “Because it matters to you. Not because… I don’t think less of you for it. I wish I hadn’t found it so that you could have told me yourself.”

Yuri is silent a moment before he lifts his chin and looks directly at Otabek. “Who says I would have told you?”

Otabek swallows the lump forming at the back of his throat and wipes his rapidly dampening palms against his thighs. “I would hope that you would tell me.” He shakes his head. “But I wouldn’t expect it.”

Yuri looks away. He opens his mouth to say something but his phone buzzes in his hand and he looks down at it. He hoists his backpack up and grabs the handle of his suitcase. 

There’s something terrible pulling at the inside of his stomach as he unlocks the door and pulls it open for Yuri to step through. He won’t stop him. Not if it’s what Yuri wants after Otabek has destroyed the trust between them. 

He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the door as Yuri steps over the threshold and into the hallway.

“I haven’t presented yet,” Otabek says, eyes still closed.

He hears Yuri pause and he opens his eyes. Those bright eyes are pinned on him, narrowed in suspicion.

“You’re a beta,” he says.

Otabek shakes his head, hand sweaty around the doorknob. “I never presented. My doctor assumes I’m a beta.” He shrugs. “Too short for an alpha.”

Yuri stares at him, his lips slightly parted. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Beka,” he says with a shake of his head, but nothing else comes.

Otabek opens the door wider and steps into the hallway. He tugs Yuri’s hood up over his head and cups both sides of his neck for a moment before he stands aside. 

“Safe flight, Yurochka,” Otabek says quietly.

Yuri looks at him a moment before he gathers his suitcase and descends the stairs. Otabek watches him disappear from sight. He stands in the hallway until his toes go numb with cold.

 

\--

 

It’s a full four days of painful radio silence between them before Otabek can’t take it any longer. He can’t think of a suitable text so he gathers up Flura and takes a snapchat video of her trilling a happy purr while he scratches her neck and drops a kiss on her head.

“She misses you,” he says. He doesn’t cut the video off before he starts to say that she’s not the only one but he sends it anyway.

Yuri snaps back a few minutes later, a picture of his Persian cat curled into a ball on his lap. “The king misses you too,” it reads. 

Otabek has never met Yuri’s cat before. He closes out of the app and shoots off a text before he can talk himself out of it. 

_I bought new skates yesterday,_ is all he can think to say.

Yuri’s response is immediate and angry. _You’ll never break them in fast enough. Don’t be stupid._

Otabek settles back against his pillows with his cat and smiles at his phone.

 

\--

 

It’s odd to be alone again, after a week and a half of having Yuri for constant company. His space, which was never too much to begin with, still somehow seems too empty. He works out alone, he eats alone, he grocery shops alone, he sleeps alone, and he skates alone. He is entirely alone, aside from his cat and his resumed line of communication with Yuri.

The boy (the omega, his mind tells him, making his stomach tighten in a manner which is not entirely unpleasant) is always on his mind. In every thought, every moment, Yuri is present, like a low-grade fever, slowly burning away at him from the inside out. 

He is again uncomfortable in his own skin, like he had been the night he’d awoken in the pre-dawn hours and wandered his small apartment. He misses Yuri, misses his presence in every aspect of his life. It’s strange, he thinks, to go from not knowing someone, to becoming completely expectant of them being in your life.

Otabek wakes feeling hot, even though he’s kicked off every blanket he’d had covering him when he went to sleep. The apartment is chilly, like it always gets at night, but he feels uncomfortable, his hair sweat-damp at the roots, and his muscles fatigued like he’s worked out too much, pushed himself too hard in a skate. 

He sits up on the side of his bed and rubs at the back of his neck.

Then the smell hits him. Yuri. Here and now. But Otabek knows that’s not possible. Yuri has been gone for over a week. 

Still, he stands and his knees nearly buckle under him. He grabs blindly at the wall for support and stumbles into it, hitting his shoulder heavily. He feels hot, too big for his own skin, like someone shrunk it around him and he can barely breathe for it. His belly is twisting tightly, making him feel nauseous, and his vision is starting to blur. He staggers away from the wall, following Yuri’s scent, like he’s on autopilot, even as his legs threaten to give.

The smell is coming from his dresser, the stack of clothes he’s yet to drag himself down to the laundry to do. It’s his Kazakh sweater, the one that Yuri had worn frequently during his visit. His hands shake as he reaches for it and stuffs the fabric up against his nose. 

He breathes it in, over and over, biting at the fabric until it’s wet from his tongue and his nose is filled with nothing but _Yuri, Yuri, Yuri_. The shaking doesn’t stop, in fact, it gets worse. His entire body seems wracked with it and he’s certain that he’s going to throw up.

Otabek stumbles his way into the bathroom, barely managing to elbow on the light, because he hasn’t been able to let go of his sweater yet. He’s gnawing at the fabric, feeling out of control, and somewhere, in the back of his mind, he is terrified of whatever is happening to him.

He realizes, once the cold tile of the bathroom floor is firmly under his feet, that he’s gone achingly hard. His cock is tenting his sweatpants, dampening the fabric where it pushes up obscenely at his waist. 

“Fuck,” he gasps before taking another huge inhale. His lungs burn and he can taste the smell of Yuri on the back of his tongue. He feels disgusted with himself because it’s Yuri, the scent that his greatest friend has left behind that has driven him here. 

He realizes suddenly what’s happening to him and he tears the sweater away from his face and hurls it to the ground, gripping at the counter behind his back to keep himself from lunging for it again.

He’s presenting.

He’s presenting as an alpha and it’s Yuri’s scent — Yuri’s _omega_ scent — that has brought him here. 

“No,” he rasps to himself, feeling a cold rush of guilt that is quickly overwhelmed by the hot coil of heat tightening in his belly. 

He tears his shirt off, quickly sweating through the back of it, and fumbles for his waistband. He hadn’t thought this was even a possibility. He’s much too small to be an alpha, he’s not domineering enough for it, doesn’t want the power or the social standing, it’s not _him_.

He strips off his sweatpants and fumbles his way into the shower where he collapses painfully into the bathtub. His dick is so hard that it hurts, the base of it aching terribly. He knows what is going to happen, remembers it being explained to him. Remembers being told it was a possibility when he didn’t present around age sixteen like most others did. 

Not him. Not Otabek. Not an alpha. 

Fuck, Yuri hates alphas. And now that he knows about his omega status, he understands. Yuri rarely feels comfortable around anyone, but it’s only betas he lets near him. Betas are safe. Betas aren’t threats to omegas. At least not like alphas are (or can be, anyway). 

Otabek was a beta. Otabek was safe for Yuri. Yuri won’t want anything to do with him once he finds out about this.

_Yuri, Yuri, Yuri._

He groans at the hot rush of want through his body, pooling in his groin, making his cock leak. He doesn’t want to touch himself; he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to think about Yuri when he does this, but he’s losing himself to it. The heat in his body is becoming overwhelming and he’s terrified that he’s going to pass out.

Otabek gropes blindly under the shower curtain for his sweater and drags it back to his nose to take a shaky inhale. The scent is immediately soothing to his nerves, and he takes another breath, and another. His eyes fall shut and he thinks about Yuri as he takes his cock in his other hand and squeezes. 

The bliss of it is almost more painful than the throb at the base of his cock. He knows he’s going to knot, knows it’s going to stretch and expand and ache there, where the skin was never meant to grow. But he can’t stop touching himself now that he’s started.

The head of his dick is wet, overly sensitive, and he rubs at the slit, leaking precome against his fingers. He shudders and inhales again. He tries to ground himself in the smell of Yuri instead of letting his mind pull Yuri into the fantasy but it’s a futile effort. 

He can’t help but think about Yuri. He thinks about him on all fours, smelling this good, only wet and heat-ready for him, crying out as Otabek pounds him from behind, wanting him, wanting his knot, begging for it. He bites down on the damp fabric in his mouth and chokes on his own whimper. 

Yuri touching him, Yuri’s long, slender fingers wrapped around his dick, Yuri’s knees hooked over his elbows, Yuri coming all over himself, Yuri tied to him, petting at his sweat-soaked hair while he fills him up.

_Yuri, Yuri, Yuri._

Otabek cries out and starts to come. He tugs at himself, faster and harder, soaking his hand and his belly as his knot fattens up, burning pain through his thighs, but heightening the pleasure, ratcheting it up so high he thinks he might pass out. He tries to leave Yuri out of it, but Otabek is well and truly lost to it. He imagines this happening _inside_ of Yuri, Yuri clamping around him, whining for it, wanting it. He comes so hard his vision blackens around the edges.

He grips his sweater, keeping it pressed against his nose, trying to ground himself, even as he comes harder and longer and _more_ than he ever has in his life. He thinks it may never stop, making his entire body spasm with need and relief, come slicking his hand, soaking his belly, and dripping over the juts of his hips. 

His toes spread and curl at the pleasure wracking his body as he works it out of himself. He whimpers, squeezing tight around the bulge of his knot, and he whites out.

He drifts, only partially conscious and still thinking vaguely of Yuri. 

When Otabek comes back to himself, he’s chilled to the bone from his cooled sweat and his torso is covered with come. His leg hangs numbly over the edge of the tub, foot muscles cramped up from how hard he’d clenched his toes. His hand still clutches his sweater. 

He drops it and gets shakily to his feet. Come runs down his thighs and he hurries to turn on the shower.

The water is frigid and it makes him yelp and grab for the bar at the back wall of the shower to hold himself up. Cold water pounds at his back while he grits his teeth and shakes, willing his muscles to relax and his abused feet to hold him up.

Otabek lets his head hang when the water begins to warm. He needs to turn and wash himself off while the water is hot, but he can’t make himself move. 

He’s an alpha. A late-presenting alpha; almost unheard of at eighteen. And now Yuri will want nothing to do with him. He can practically hear Yuri’s voice in his head, the way he’s sneered about alphas in the past. _Cocky assholes,_ he’s said, practically spitting it at JJ’s feet at the GPF last year. _Pumped up betas who think with their dicks._

Not like him. Not like beta-Otabek. Otabek was safe. Yuri trusts him, let his guard down, let Otabek close to him in ways he’s never allowed anyone else. 

Not anymore.

Not ever again.

Otabek clenches his eyes against the burn of tears. Yuri, whom his mind pulled into his fantasies so quickly, latched onto and didn’t let go. He hadn’t even thought of anyone else. Not once. Yuri, who is still so young. 

_But has already presented,_ the lecherous traitor in his head tells him. _Grown where it counts._

“No!” Otabek snaps, out loud to himself. He pounds his fist against the shower wall and turns, grabbing for his body wash. He scrubs himself down, rough and quick. He won’t think of Yuri like this. Yuri is his _friend_. He refuses.

It takes everything Otabek has to turn off the shower and climb out. He towels off and makes his way back to bed, collapsing naked onto the mattress. He’s already cold by the time he falls into his mess of blankets. He sorts them out enough to crawl under a few of them and grabs the pillow Yuri had used, tucking it under his arm. It still smells like him. 

Otabek tells himself that it’s all right, because he’d done this when Yuri had left before. His scent is warm and soft, conflicting with his bristly personality (at least toward others), and it’s comforted him since the first time Yuri nudged up under his jaw to scent him.

Otabek takes a deep breath and feels Yuri’s lingering scent wash over him, loosening his muscles and calming the jumble in his head instantly. 

He exhales slowly, letting out a shaky, weak, “fuck,” along with it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I ended up rethinking and reworking the storyline after posting the first part, so there will be a total of three chapters (although this one is a bit more like an interlude). Let me know if anything needs tagging.

Yuri sits on the growing suspicion taking shape in his mind for one full day before he gives in and lets it totally consume him. 

It had been three days of complete silence from Otabek, three days of unreturned texts, unopened snaps of him and his cat, three days of increasingly urgent worry that something had gone wrong with him, something had happened and no one had had the heart to tell him. 

He’d googled Otabek’s name in a panic on the fourth day, fearing news of an accident or some other sort of tragedy, but the most recent news article had been about Otabek’s free skate and failure to medal at last year’s GPF. Regardless, no news, he’d decided, was not good news.

He had called and Otabek had answered. 

Yuri wasn’t sure what he’d been hearing. Otabek’s heavy breathing, cut-off Kazakh curses and a low-pitched rumble from the back of his throat. He’d sounded pained and desperate, whispering Yuri’s name in a choked off voice before telling him to stay away and hanging up on him.

Yuri feels like he hasn’t moved a muscle since that phone call ended. He hasn’t tried to ring Otabek back to attempt to get more out of him because he’s terrified that he already knows. Otabek hadn’t been even remotely coherent, just saying Yuri’s name over and over, for the most part, and swearing a bit in between his gasps for breath. But it had been enough. Just the tone of Otabek’s voice, the deep, purring trill of it, had resonated in Yuri’s belly like a warm touch, making him shiver and his hands shake where they both clutched at his phone.

He has only ever responded to an alpha like that. He’s only ever felt that push of submission at the back of his neck and the weakening of his knees, when an alpha has spoken to him so gruffly. 

Otabek’s voice has never done that to him in the past. Otabek has never carried with him that authority, that predatory edge. Not his Otabek, not his friend. No, this is something entirely new. And Yuri is afraid.

He can’t bring himself to call Otabek back. His thumb hovers over the call button on his phone until the screen dims and he has to wake it up again. Over and over. Finally, he switches to his phone’s browser and searches for answers he’s too scared to find out any other way. 

There are medical blogs aplenty on the presentation of alphas, but not nearly so much information on late presenting. Because that’s what Otabek had told him, wasn’t it? That he hadn’t presented? That his doctor had told him that he was almost certainly a beta because of his lacking height and docile attitude? 

Yuri closes his eyes and thinks about how Otabek had said his name, purring it down the receiver at him, and he shudders in a not entirely unpleasant manner. 

He moves on to the next blog.

_A presentation any later than eighteen years of age, in either first-gender, will likely trigger an uncommonly-intense rut immediately following._

He falls down the rabbit hole of online medical information until he’s not sure what the hell he’s reading anymore and Otabek could just as likely be dying of some unknown disease as he is presenting late.

Yuri’s eyes are burning from staring at his phone screen for so long. Feeling no better off than when he’d started looking, he calls the only alpha he’s ever been friendly with, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“Yurio!” Viktor shouts when he answers, voice happy and loud, as though he’s speaking to Yuri for the first time in years and not days. They’d skated together over the weekend.

Yuri jerks back a bit at the volume and then rolls his eyes. “Don’t call me that,” he grumbles, pulling his knees up so he can pick at a scab on the top of his foot. They’re bruised and just a little bit swollen because he can’t afford to not put himself through his paces. He can’t let himself slip, not even a little bit. Not ever.

Viktor croons a sympathetic sound at him. “My little Yuri,” he settles on, instead.

“That’s worse.”

He hears a shout in the background and Viktor responds rather slowly, in Russian, for Katsuki’s benefit, before addressing Yuri again. “My Yuuri says hi.”

“I didn’t call to discuss your Katsudon,” Yuri snaps, rubbing at his face with his free hand. 

Viktor goes quiet for a moment and then his voice is concerned. “What’s going on, Yurio?”

Yuri sighs into the receiver and closes his eyes. There’s no point in telling Viktor to stop calling him that, so he bites it back and slumps down into the pillows that he’s piled up behind him. Viktor waits his silence out. 

“I think…” he hadn’t taken the time to consider what he was going to say to Viktor, or how, before he’d called him. “Something is… wrong with Otabek.”

“Wrong? Wrong how?” Viktor sounds uncommonly serious.

Yuri shrugs to himself, glancing out the window, where it has just begun to snow. He wipes the back of his hand across his nose and covers a sniff with a cough.

“He’s sick,” Yuri finally settles on.

There is skepticism in his voice when he asks, “Sick how?”

Yuri huffs. He doesn’t know why he’s called Viktor for this. He doesn’t know why he’s involving him at all. If everything he’s read is true, then Viktor can do nothing to actually help Otabek while he’s in a rut; his physical presence would likely be met with territorial violence. But Viktor is the only person, who isn’t related to him, who knows about his omega status. He’s the only one that Yuri _can_ talk to about this.

“Yuri,” Viktor urges. “Tell me.”

“He’s in rut,” Yuri forces himself to say. 

Viktor is silent for a few too many beats. Yuri checks to see if the call has dropped. “I thought he was a beta,” Viktor finally says, voice carefully measured. There’s a shuffle of movement in the background and Yuri gets the distinct feeling that Viktor’s Yuuri is now listening in. The knowledge that he’s about to spill his own secret to someone else doesn’t stop him from doing it.

He scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. He thought he was but he—” he cuts himself off because Otabek’s story isn’t his to tell. He doesn’t know how much he should share with Viktor or what he even really expects Viktor to do to help him. If he expects help at all. He presses his forehead to his knee and closes his eyes. He feels decidedly helpless.

“He what, Yurio?” Viktor prods gently. There’s alpha persuasion in it, the kind that soothes in omegas and, more often than not, betas. He hates that it works, even when they’re not speaking face to face.

Yuri rubs at the back of his neck and digs his feet into his covers, wishing that they were the mismatched blankets of Otabek’s bed and not his own uniform sheets.

“I visited him for a while. We… fought before I left. We were talking again, but now he hasn’t answered me in days,” he says, deciding on a different tact. “I finally called him and he answered and he… he wasn’t himself. I could hear it in his pitch.” He knows he’s blushing. “I could feel it. His voice just…”

Viktor sucks in a breath. Yuri thinks he hears a quiet curse. “Yurio, listen to me,” Viktor says. His voice is still gentle but it’s serious, urgent in some way. “If he has presented late, as an alpha, and you were recently there, it’s likely your scent caused it.”

Yuri knows this from his research but it’s still like a sinking stone in his belly to hear it confirmed by someone who would know for certain, someone who has experienced it firsthand.

“So?” he asks, his voice thick. He clears his throat, settling his free hand at the base of it.

“So?” Viktor repeats. “Yurio, you must stay away, if he’s in rut. If your scent triggered this—“

“I did nothing!” Yuri shouts, sitting upright. “Stop saying it like I’m at fault for something!”

He hears grating, English words spoken, too softly for him to pick up, but he gets the feeling that Viktor is being chastised. 

The phone switches hands and Japanese Yuuri’s voice greets him. “Yurio?” he asks.

“What?” Yuri gripes, switching grudgingly to English and rubbing at his eyes with the fingertips of one hand. They’re damp, so he doesn’t stop until he’s seeing stars.

When Yuuri speaks, it’s in slow, careful Russian. “What Viktor means is to say is you wouldn’t be safe around him, right now.”

“Otabek wouldn’t hurt me,” Yuri snaps, feeling a surge of protectiveness over his friend. His face feels hot. 

“Not on purpose,” Yuuri starts.

Viktor’s voice comes back clearer. “Where are you?”

“Home. Put Katsudon back on.” 

“Yurio, please; just listen to me. If he’s just now presented, his rut would be unbearably strong, especially if he hasn’t been to a doctor. He would need medication to control it. He won’t be himself until he comes out of it.” 

Yuri tips his head back and closes his eyes. “How long will it last?”

“A week, maybe?”

“He’s alone,” Yuri whispers to himself, but Viktor hears it.

“You can’t go to him, Yurio,” Viktor says, that gentle tone back in his voice. Before he can respond, Viktor continues, “We could go. Yuuri could see him.”

Because he’s a beta, he’s safe, Yuri thinks ruefully. It’s far from the first time that he’s cursed his physiology but he hates it now, more than ever; now that Beka needs him, needs _someone_ , to look after him, and he can’t do it. But Katsudon could.

“No,” he says, “Otabek would never allow it.”

If only _he_ were a nice, neutral beta.

“Yurio—“

“I know him, Viktor,” Yuri snaps. “He would be angry. He can do this by himself, can’t he? Nothing will happen?”

Viktor lets out a frustrated sound and Yuuri says something to him that is too muffled for him to hear. 

“So long as he stays in his home, he will be fine,” Viktor says. “But we could check.”

“No. What part of ‘no’ did you not understand?” Yuri barks down the receiver at him.

The phone shuffles to Yuuri’s hand again. “Give us his number, at least. I’ll text him and check on him. If he needs help, he can tell me.”

Yuri doesn’t think Otabek is actually capable of asking anyone for help, if the last phone call he’s shared with him is any indication. But his worry overrides his trepidation, and he hopes that Otabek will forgive him for sharing his all-but-confirmed suspicions with Viktor and his fiancé.

“Fine,” he sighs, feeling suddenly exhausted. “It’s been four days since he stopped speaking to me, so three more?” Yuuri makes a noise of confirmation. “I’ll text you his number. Call me the minute you speak to him.” 

“Of course,” Yuuri says. His voice doesn’t carry the same, soothing timbre that Viktor’s does, but it’s still gentle and equally annoying in its ability to settle some small part of him. He’d outright forbid them from going to see Otabek if either of them had any idea where he lives. As it is, he mutters his thanks and hangs up. 

He plugs his phone in to charge and yanks open his bedside table. The same, half-crushed pack of cigarettes that had accompanied him home from Almaty sits atop everything in the drawer. His hands shake as he plucks one out and sets it between his lips. 

The air outside is frigid, blowing snow through the crack he opens and he shudders against it. He snags a blanket off the foot of his bed and bundles it tightly around himself. He just stares for a moment, looking out at the road below, slush-covered and gray. Everything is dark and cold and he wants so badly to be back in Otabek’s bed, playing video games, eating his cooking, and napping with his cat. He nearly bites through the filter of the cigarette. 

He clicks the lighter a few times before the flame finally jumps to life, fluttering against the wind whipping through the open window. He gets the cigarette lit and takes a drag that makes him cough. It isn’t at all soothing to his frazzled nerves and he only smokes it a third of the way before he stubs it out on the sill and tosses it outside.

Yuri slams the window shut and backs up to sit on his bed. He’s cold, chilled through to the bone, and he doesn’t know how much of it actually has to do with the wind he’s just exposed himself to. He flops over onto his side and curls up until he can tuck his legs into his blankets again and stares at his phone.

There is only a moment of indecision before he grabs it and shoots off a text to Otabek.

> Text me please. Or call. As soon as you can.

After a while, his cat hops up onto the bed, already purring his quiet purr, and settles down, facing him. Yuri pets him for a moment and then pulls him close. He lets out a quiet meow at the handling, but comes under the blanket to lie against Yuri’s chest. He kisses the top of the cat’s head and rests his cheek against his bicep.

He doesn’t know what to think. Right now, he’s quite literally waiting on word from someone else to know where to go from here. Either Otabek will text him as soon as he’s feeling like himself again (or won’t ever speak to him again, some rotten part of his brain reminds him) or Yuuri or Viktor will report back will news of Otabek’s condition.

His condition, he thinks. Whether or not Yuri is correct, more accurately. Although he’s certain that he is without the actual confirmation of it. He knows it in his gut, knows it from his reaction to Otabek’s voice, that he’s right. His relationship with Otabek is about to change, no matter what, and he doesn’t know what to do or how to feel. He has no control over the fact and it makes his chest ache to think about.

No part of Yuri has ever been comfortable with what an alpha can do to him. Not in any threatening sort of way —although that is a very real concern too— more in ways that that short phone call with Otabek had hammered home as reality. The pitch of his voice can spark a need to bow to an alpha’s will that is almost too strong to ignore. The need to obey and please is almost a tangible thing, as though someone has just come along and dropped a physical urge directly into his hands.

The reiteration that he’s small and in need of protecting from society as a whole that haunts every omega’s footsteps is completely unwelcome. He despises the attitude that comes with their knotted dicks, the entitlement, and the arrogance that alphas like JJ exude with every cocky smirk. He hates it, he hates _them_.

All of that and none of it is the worst part, to him.

The shock of desire that had welled up immediately within him at hearing Otabek like that, so obviously in need and panting at hearing his voice. That’s the worst of it, he thinks. That he may have wanted more from Otabek when he was the safe, middle ground of a beta, but he _knows_ how badly he wants now that he’s an alpha. 

Yuri’s jaw aches from how hard he’s clenching it and he forces himself to relax. The knowledge that he wants more from his carefully cultivated friendship with Otabek isn’t news to him. He’s felt it from nearly the moment that he climbed on the back of his motorcycle. But he’d always thought _later_ and _when I'm older_ , and now his belly is twisting constantly and terribly with _now, now, now_.

He takes a shaking inhale and pinches his eyes shut tightly. The cat makes a quiet sound at him and leans in to groom his eyebrow. Yuri scratches at the back of his neck and listens to the purr that bursts forth in a low, pleased rumble. 

Yuri worries at his bottom lip and tries to let it all go. Viktor had said that Otabek would likely be deep in his rut right now, and not at all himself for a couple more days. There’s nothing he can do to resolve any of this right now and stressing about it will only make him sick. 

Still, he can’t help but fret. Is he conscious enough to take care of Flura? Is he taking care of _himself_? Otabek is alone in his apartment and Yuri isn’t sure if anyone will think to look in on him. He’s not skating hard enough yet to be meeting with his coach, so who is looking after him? It should be _Yuri_.

He can’t stop the frustrated sound that escapes him. He rubs hard at his eyes and his fingertips come away damp. The cat licks at his cheek, tongue rough against his skin, and Yuri nudges him to make him stop. The cat closes his eyes and purrs louder at him.

Yuri rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. He doesn’t feel any closer to an answer than he did when Otabek had hung up on him hours ago. He knows what the subconscious part of him wants, what his biological impulses tell him. He knows how he felt _before_ and what he’d hoped that he and Otabek might be eventually building toward, but that’s it. The uncertainty hadn’t been unpleasant. The not knowing but being confident that their closeness wasn’t entirely the bond of mere friendship was comfortable and safe.

Nothing has really been taken from him, but he still feels bereft of something and he can’t put his finger on it. There will be a shift between the two of them, and he doesn’t know the end result will be.

Sighing, he closes his eyes and tries not to think at all.

He waits for someone to call him with news.


	3. Chapter 3

Otabek’s first rut is hell. Total and complete hell. There are so many awful highlights that he wouldn’t even know where to start with ranking them. The worst, though, he knows without question. The absolute worst part of it all is feeling so completely out of control of himself. 

It’s seven straight days of being unable to reign in his body, of being at the mercy of an influx of foreign hormones that ratchet the pure _need_ of it all up so high that he blacks out from it. It’s sheer terror at not knowing what he’s doing for long stretches of time. His muscles ache and his cock is practically raw from rubbing himself off in his hand or against his bed. The base of it is swollen and tender, stretched beyond pain to accommodate his new knot.

He’s exhausted and hungry and dehydrated and, by day seven, absolutely fucking miserable.

He’s been lucid enough between bouts of getting himself off to have tended to his cat, but she’s made herself scarce, probably having been put off by his increasingly odd behavior. But, as he draws nearer and nearer to coming out of it, he remembers more and more of what he’s done, the things he’s thought, the images he’s conjured to bring himself to orgasm, over and over and over.

He feels shame again.

The clock reads 7:02am and he’s been staring at it since five. His back hurts and his toes are cramped but he can’t bring himself to get out of bed. The blankets have long-since been kicked to the floor, and his sheets are beyond any hope of saving. He’s absolutely disgusting, covered in days of dried release and sweat. 

Otabek tries to keep his breathing steady, his body absolutely still, hoping that this is it, that it’s over now, and maybe he can finally hold himself upright in the shower. He wants to strip his bed and collapse into it and sleep for a week to make up for the one that he’s lost to his body’s uncontrollable drive. 

At 7:59am he closes his eyes, face turned into his pillow. He’s a little bit cold and it only serves to bolster his hope that his rut has come to an end. He hopes and hopes and tries to sleep.

When he starts to sweat, feeling suddenly hot all over, he wants to cry. He clenches his eyes and fists his hands against the mattress. He wants this to be _over_. He can’t do it again; he’s beyond exhausted, completely wiped out. He just wants to _sleep_. He turns his face completely into the pillow as his dick rapidly starts to harden, and lets out an agonized cry. 

Unbidden, thoughts of Yuri are already creeping in, as one of his hands slides down to grip his cock. He’s shaking, pulling his knees up so he can stroke himself easier. It hurts, everything fucking hurts, but Otabek is sliding helplessly into the same fantasy that has haunted him since this all began. He thinks of Yuri, imagines spreading him out on his knees, like this, and pressing himself to his back. Imagines how wet he would be, how open, how desperate for Otabek to press in and fill him up. How he’d cry out for it.

He’d be Yuri’s first (even though he has no way of being certain that that’s true. He hopes it is. He can’t imagine Yuri with anyone else; the thought alone is physically painful). Yuri would be heat-sick and aching, desperate for it, begging Otabek to pump him full. Yuri trembling with want and needing him to sate the same ache that’s settled deep inside of Otabek.

It’s terrible and awful and it makes him come, wet and hot over his fingers. He avoids the base of his cock, where the throb of his knot threatens, needing only the slightest stimulation from Otabek’s hand to swell. He’s learned to avoid it. If he doesn’t touch it, he usually can avoid knotting. 

The relief that his orgasms bring him without the gut-wrenching pleasure of his knot doesn’t last nearly as long, and isn’t remotely as satisfying. But it gets the job done. 

And that’s all it is, at this point: a task for Otabek to complete so that he can rest fitfully again.

He buries his face in his pillow once more, legs shaking with fatigue, and hand covered in his cooling release. He lets out a sob, chest tight and aching, before he lowers himself onto his side and tries to breathe.

Against his wishes, his eyes crack open and he looks at the clock. It’s just gone 8:30am. Otabek tries to sleep.

 

\--

 

It does, eventually, end. He only gets himself off once more before noon and then, one final time, hunched over the bathroom sink, knees shaking and cock rubbed raw, well passed the point of pain. He touches himself carefully, every movement cautious now, instead of frantic and out of control. He focuses on stroking over the head of his dick instead of letting himself knot up one last time like the swell of want in his belly is telling him to. 

He bites his lip when he comes, and he almost manages to keep Yuri out of his head, but not quite entirely so. 

Otabek avoids his own gaze in the mirror and turns to start the shower. His entire body is weaker than he can ever remember it being. His muscles are sore, his belly aches, and his is cock chaffed from the constant attention. Everything hurts and he swears he doesn’t care if he ever has another orgasm again, as long as he lives.

The hot water of the shower saps what remaining strength he has in his legs and he almost sits down. Knowing he may never be able to get back out again is the only thing that keeps him on his feet. He soaps up and rubs himself down, washing away layers of dried come and sweat, nearly crying at the relief of starting to feel like himself again. 

He stares down at his dick for a moment, before he can bring himself to wash that too. He’s scared to touch it, if he’s honest with himself, because he doesn’t want to give any remaining rut hormones the idea that he’s back in it for another round. It’s sore, the head still a little swollen, and the base covered in wide, dark stretch marks. It’s ugly, he thinks, suddenly feeling an uncommon rush of insecurity. He can’t imagine ever wanting to show someone this, let someone touch him or put their mouth on him. Not anymore.

He stares at the tile wall as he wipes himself down and hurriedly climbs out of the shower.

As tired as he is, there’s absolutely no way that he’s going to be able to climb into his bed and sleep it off. With a sigh, he cranks up the heat and goes to open the window. It’s cold out, still, overcast and snowy, but he can’t take the smell anymore. He strips his bed, bundling the sheets up together, and then he shoves his feet into his boots and takes them down to the building’s trash.

Flura appears, hopping up onto the windowsill to sniff at the frigid air pouring into the apartment, while he fits the bed with clean sheets. She trills at him when he scoops her up and closes the window, dropping a lingering kiss on the top of her head. 

“Sorry, girl,” he tells her, kissing her again. She closes her eyes at him and kneads her claws into his chest. He’s pathetically glad that he hasn’t made her afraid of him.

Freshly fed and watered, his cat curls up on the foot of his bed while he gets his laundry together. The sweater that Yuri had worn, the one that Otabek had desperately pressed against his nose the night that he presented, still smells like him. His senses are heightened now, sharper and cleaner, and he doesn’t know if it’ll fade but he hopes they’ll go back to the way they used to be. He doesn’t think he can handle smelling Yuri the way he did before, let alone like this. 

Red-faced, he bundles his sweater up in his other laundry and hopes it’ll bury Yuri’s distinctively sweet scent. 

It isn’t until he’s boiling water for oatmeal and tea that he finds his phone, jammed into the silverware drawer. He hadn’t even realized that it was missing until now. It’s completely dead, when he tries to thumb it on, and he sighs, padding out into the main room to plug it in. 

He’s sitting back against his pillows with a mug of tea and a heaping bowl of oatmeal by the time his phone has charged enough to turn on again. A mass of texts begins to roll in, notifications of missed calls and voicemails from different names and numbers, and he feels a lurch of panic in his stomach. Then he remembers why his phone was in with the silverware to begin with.

The phone call from Yuri had followed a series of increasingly worried texts, and Otabek had answered. He doesn’t know if he even said anything, what he could have possibly have been able to communicate to Yuri in that state. He doesn’t think he could have told him what was happening. He hopes he didn’t. He’d been cognizant enough to hide his phone from himself, after that.

“Fuck,” he whispers, snatching up his phone and placing his tea down in its place. 

Texts from Yuri had stopped a couple of days ago, but texts from an unknown number had started up shortly after. Otabek feels so anxious, he thinks he would vomit if he had anything in his stomach.

He opens the text (dated three days ago) and scrolls up to read.

> (6:02pm): Hey Otabek, this is Katsuki Yuuri.

Otabek thinks he may vomit anyway. Katsuki knows, which means that Nikiforov knows. Because Yuri knows and he’s called them. The phone call he’d actually picked up had been a frenzy-driven mistake. He’d seen Yuri’s name on the screen and he’d snatched it up without thinking. Without being _able_ to think. He’d just wanted Yuri with him so badly.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he whispers again, because it bears repeating.

He scrubs at his face and looks down at his phone again.

> (6:03pm): Please let me know when you’re feeling better.  
>  (6:06pm): Yurio is afraid something is wrong. I think we all know what but it means he can’t come to you himself.

Otabek’s heart speeds up in his chest. Yuri can’t come. Yuri can’t see him like this, can’t know what’s happened to him and how bad it was.

> (6:07pm): If you need help, I can come.  
>  (6:08pm): It can’t be easy, you must be exhausted. Let me help if you need it?  
>  (6:11pm): Please text or call when you’re feeling back to normal. We’re worried for you.

Otabek kind of wishes he’d hidden his phone better. He prods at his oatmeal and forces himself to take a few bites before he taps out a response to Katsuki.

_Thank you for your concern. I’m fine now. Please keep this to yourself. I assume Nikiforov knows too… I’m not ready to tell anyone._

He hits send and, after a moment of hesitation, adds Katsuki to his contacts. He’s halfway through his oatmeal when his phone buzzes against his thigh.

> (3:32pm): We won’t tell. Have you spoken to Yurio?  
>  (3:32pm): He’s worried about you.

Otabek doesn’t respond. He sets his phone aside again and forces himself to finish eating. He doesn’t want to, he certainly doesn’t feel very hungry, with anxiety twisting his stomach into knots, like it is, but he knows he hasn’t eaten much over the past week, so he does. He drinks his tea as he walks his bowl back to the kitchen, and leaves it and his mug sitting in the sink to soak.

Flura has curled up on the other pillow and looks to be waiting on him to make his way back to bed. He gets under the blankets and settles down against his pillows, feeling all remaining energy he has simply slip away.

His phone buzzes and he groans, reaching out for it blindly, with the intention of thumbing the volume off. Yuri’s name is on the display, however, and it buzzes in his hand, again and again, until he has four texts from Yuri, all in rapid succession.

Otabek doesn’t know if he can look at them, doesn’t know if he can talk to Yuri. Not when Yuri knows what’s happened to him, likely knows that his scent was the catalyst for it all, if he’d gone to Katsuki for help. He’s likely shouldering some imaginary blame for it, Otabek reasons with himself. He doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t want to know what any of his texts say. But he can’t shake the twist in his belly that reminds him how much Yuri means to him, and how it has absolutely nothing to do with the alpha hormones.

He unlocks his phone and reads.

> (3:40pm): You’re all right now?  
>  (3:41pm): You texted Katsuki but not me?  
>  (3:41pm): Otabek please  
>  (3:42pm): I thought we were friends.

Otabek rubs his palm down his face, fighting the sheer exhaustion burrowed deep into his bones as he pushes himself up onto his elbow and taps out a response.

_I’m okay. Exhausted and trying to sleep. I swear I’ll call you when I get up. Can we talk then?_

He feels torn in two, because he doesn’t want to put off speaking to Yuri as much as he wants to fend it off as long as possible. He’s always known his affection for Yuri wasn’t as simple as pure friendship, but he’d intended to deal with that down the road, when Yuri is old enough to have a real grasp on the matter. Not now and certainly not like this. 

He’s equal parts surprised and thrilled that Yuri is speaking to him at all, knowing how he feels about alphas. He hadn’t thought that Yuri would have revealed himself to Nikiforov as an omega, but he apparently has. And Otabek has no idea if he’s done so, inadvertently, in a plea to Katsuki for advice from the beta or not. It makes him feel sick that Yuri might have compromised his secret for him. But Otabek has seen Yuri with the two of them and he thinks it’s more likely that Yuri has let himself be vulnerable to someone other than himself, and that’s far better than the alternative.

His phone buzzes just as his eyes have started to close, and he startles awake again.

> (3:46pm): I can’t wait that long. I need to talk to you.

Otabek pushes his face into his bicep and lets out a quiet, desperate sound. He’s so fucking _tired_.

_Yura please I can barely keep my eyes open. I swear I’ll call you. I’ll tell you everything._

The response comes before he can set his phone down.

> (3:47pm): It’s been a week I can’t wait anymore.

Otabek’s exhale is a little bit hysterical sounding, even to his own ears.

_I’m falling asleep Yura. I promise I’ll call. Please be patient with me._

> (3:48pm): Beka please.

Otabek starts typing out a reply but he’s asleep before he can finish it.

 

\--

 

Otabek wakes in the late afternoon, almost a full day later. The cat is wrapped around his head, purring loudly against his ear and he’s a little chilly from where he’s kicked the blankets down in the night. He feels stiff and his bones creak when he sits up, listening to Flura’s displeasured meow at being jostled. He pets her for a moment before he leans forward, elbows on his thighs, to bury his face in his hands.

He takes a moment to just let himself breathe. His hair is tangled when he tries to run his fingers through the top of it, and too shaggy along his neck for his liking. His neck aches and his stomach feels like it may be in revolt against him. Otabek isn’t in a rush to move so he gives himself time to steady before he eventually pushes himself to his feet.

He sets the kettle on to boil and heads into the bathroom to brush his teeth. His body still feels foreign, like he’s not quite alone in it anymore, like something other than himself now has a hand on the wheel. It’s disconcerting to say the least, but he hopes it’ll either fade as his rut gets further and further away, or that he’ll get used to it. It must be normal, he thinks, looking at himself in the mirror, taking in the dark circles under his eyes and his drawn, too pale face.

He spits into the sink and takes a moment to scrub his face with a washcloth. He’ll have to speak to someone about it. His doctor or… or Nikiforov, he supposes; although he can’t imagine bringing something so private to a peer, even one who has gone though the same thing he has in presenting. His face flushes hotly just thinking about it.

Doctor it is.

Otabek has just poured himself a cup of tea when someone knocks at his door. He almost stumbles over the cat as she darts between his legs; tea splashes out of the mug and onto his hand and he curses under his breath. Setting his mug down beside his bed, he makes his way back toward the door, just as the knocking comes again, louder and more insistent.

He doesn’t have to look out the peephole, because as he settles his hand on the chain lock, he realizes that he can smell who is on the other side. Taking a breath, he attempts to steel himself against whatever is coming, and forces himself to open the door.

Yuri pushes in without waiting for an invitation, or even meeting Otabek’s startled gaze as he passes. He shrugs his backpack to the floor and folds his arms against his chest, staring at Otabek with a deep frown and an angry set to his eyes. He looks like the pissed off kid Otabek had been watching for years, before they’d become friends.

“Well?” Yuri half-shouts, when the silence between them drags on for too long. He throws his arms out and lets his hands smack against his thighs when they fall.

“Well?” Otabek repeats, feeling blindsided as he closes and locks the door again. Flura dances around between Yuri’s legs, making little noises in a bid for his attention, but he ignores her. His angry gaze is focused on Otabek with frightening precision, his mouth drawn into a tight frown.

Yuri takes in a deep breath and gestures jerkily at him again before folding his arms against his chest once more.

“I said I couldn’t wait. You said you’d call.”

“Yuri, I just woke up,” Otabek insists, finally stepping away from the door. He doesn’t move toward Yuri though. The apartment has never felt smaller to him before than it does right now. He needs more space to put between himself and Yuri because Yuri likely doesn’t trust him so blindly anymore and Otabek doesn’t trust himself. He can barely stand to look at Yuri, right now, after all of the dozens of filthy fantasies he’s had about him over the past week. He feels nauseous and disgusted with himself. Otabek settles his back against the wall and sticks his hands in the pockets of his sweats, keeping his gaze somewhere around Yuri’s knees.

“Did you check your phone?” Yuri demands, pale face going pink over his cheeks. “I’ve been texting you and calling you—“

Otabek looks down at his own bare feet. “I had the volume off.”

“I was worried!” Yuri shouts. “You knew I was and you let me hang there! You told Katsuki more than you told me!” his voice cracks over the last of it and Otabek wants to sink down to the floor and never get up again.

“Yura, I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says, looking up at him. 

Yuri’s hair is pulled back, twisted into a bun high on the back of his head; there are multiple, tiny braids tucked into it and little wispy blonde curls coming loose over his ears. He’s wearing tight, black skinny jeans over his thin legs, and one of those wild animal print hoodies under a jean jacket but nothing to fend off the icy wind outside. He looks small and upset and it isn’t anywhere near as startling as he thinks it could be, that the protective instinct he feels toward Yuri isn’t anything new. He’s always felt like this; it’s a ridiculously serious relief.

“Well, you did,” Yuri huffs, face still flushed, probably regretting letting loose the words. 

Otabek rolls his head back and forth against the wall. “Tell me what to say, Yurochka,” he says quietly, feeling like someone is letting the air out of him again.

Yuri is staring hard at the wall beside Otabek’s head. He’s biting at his lips, worrying them between his teeth, and Otabek wants to chastise him for it; he always licks them raw. 

“Yuri,” he says again.

“Did you know?” Yuri asks, eyes snapping over to meet his. The sudden intensity of that gaze is unexpected and Otabek feels his knees going a little weak. 

“Did I know?” he repeats.

Yuri stomps his foot. “Yes!” he shouts, “Did you know? Were you lying to me when you said you hadn’t presented? Is any of this fucking real or was I just drawn in by my stupid omega hormones?” 

Otabek startles at his words, pushing himself off the wall and coming closer to Yuri. He doesn’t shy away, looking up defiantly at Otabek with watery hazel eyes, his bottom lip trembling before he bites down on it.

“When did you present?” Otabek asks, keeping his voice steady. 

The amount of distance between himself and Yuri is both too much and not enough. He wants to reach out and touch him, to pull his abused lip from between his teeth, but he doesn’t know if the gesture would be welcome or not; he keeps his hands at his sides. 

“What?” Yuri asks on an exhale. “I was almost fourteen. What does that have to do with anything?”

Not even fourteen. So young. Too fucking young for any of this. Yuri’s been robbed of too much because of what he is, forced onto suppressants to hide it and disliking a part of himself too great to ignore. 

“You would have smelled it,” Otabek says, keeping his voice soft. “I wouldn’t have been able to hide it from you. The same way you wouldn’t have been able to hide from me, had I already presented.” Yuri looks up at him, wetness clumping his lashes together into dark blonde spikes. He takes a chance and reaches out to cup his cheek. Yuri closes his eyes and turns into it. 

Otabek steps closer and settles his free hand on Yuri’s other cheek, brushing his thumbs back and forth against the high, flushed arch of his cheekbones. 

“I thought you were a beta,” Yuri whispers, sounding shattered.

With a sigh, Otabek lets the touch drop and backs up to sit down on the side of his bed, running a hand through his tangled hair. 

“I wish I was, Yuri. More than anything.” The words are bitter on his tongue because he knows just how true they are. If he were a beta, the paths leading him and Yuri along would intersect so much more easily. Not like this, not with every move they make now up for debate as to whether it’s them or it’s their second natures speaking. He knows how he’s always felt, but does Yuri? He tugs at his hair again and lets his hands drop between his knees, elbows digging into his thighs.

“Tell me what…” Yuri trails off and Otabek looks up at him. He looks unsure and Otabek would place money on it that Yuri hadn’t thought beyond getting on a plane to Almaty again and showing up here. More than a small part of him is emboldened that he inspired such a strong, knee-jerk response.

Otabek catches his gaze. “I’ll tell you anything, Yura.”

Yuri’s forehead bunches and his eyebrows draw together. “I don’t know,” he says, finally. “I want you to tell me that we’re just the same as before but I know that we’re not.” 

The first twist of dread pulls at his stomach. “I’m still the same,” Otabek insists, because it’s true where he thinks it matters. “My dick has changed, not me.”

Yuri’s face goes red but he holds Otabek’s gaze. “You’re not the same. And I’m not what I let you think I was either.”

Otabek rubs hard at his eyes and watches the spots of colors dance under the pressure. 

“I didn’t want this, Yuri,” Otabek groans, letting his hands fall again. “I wanted to be a beta. I wanted that for both of us because I knew it meant I was safe for you.” Yuri blinks at him. “I’m not stupid, Yuri. I know you wouldn’t have gotten on my bike, with me, if I’d already presented as an alpha. I know we wouldn’t be where we are now, had you any way of knowing what I’d present as.” It’s the truth, and although he’s known it since the moment he was lucid enough to have rational thoughts again, it still stings. It aches, really. Terribly and forcefully, right in the center of his chest, because this could all end in a moment, at Yuri’s word.

He presses his face into his hands again and breathes. 

“I don’t want this,” he rasps.

The apartment is quiet, aside from the rush of warm air from the overhead vents and the scratching of Flura digging her claws into the carpet, somewhere down by the bathroom.

Otabek’s hearing is a little sensitive, slightly better than it used to be, but he still doesn’t hear Yuri’s approach. The hands in his hair startle him into jerking upright. But Yuri doesn’t back off. He strokes his fingers through the knotted strands of his hair, over and over, working them loose in gentle tugs. Otabek feels himself going boneless. 

Is this Yuri’s forgiveness? He afraid to assume anything, right now, so he remains silent. 

“Things will change,” Yuri says quietly, after a while. “People will know what you are.”

“I only care what you think,” Otabek says, surprising himself with the words, no matter how true they are. “They can think me a beta for as long as I can hide it.”

Yuri strokes slowly through his hair. “I don’t want you to hide for me.”

Otabek chances it and leans forward to press his forehead to Yuri’s stomach. 

“All of my roads lead to you, Yura,” he says quietly, loosing a confession he’d hoped he could hold onto for some time to come. Yuri’s fingers still momentarily in his hair and Otabek feels a cold shock of fear claw at his insides, but then he resumes stroking and Otabek tries to settle into it again.

“Idiot,” Yuri says, voice sounding fond. Otabek doesn’t want to move to look at his face. 

“I mean it,” Otabek tells him, “Tell me what will keep you with me. My friend or…” he shakes his head, “if there is ever a possibility that we could be more. Anything you give, that’s what I want. But not because our second nature drives it.”

Yuri pulls at his hair until he’s forced to sit back to look up at him. Otabek knows, in that moment, that he will never be the typical alpha. That he will be one easily undone by this omega. And he doesn’t care.

“Your newly knotted dick scares the hell out of me,” Yuri says, blunt as ever. Otabek almost laughs but he bites it back. Yuri brushes his thumbs over his eyebrows and Otabek closes his eyes under the gentle touch. “You’ve always scared me.”

“I would never hurt you.”

“I know,” Yuri says. “I trust you, still.” His scent is sweet and rich and his posture is open and easy. Otabek knows it’s the truth, without question. 

“I wanted more before this happened.”

Yuri folds one arm around his shoulders and pulls himself closer, pressing in between his spread thighs and easing Otabek’s head in to rest against his chest. He resumes stroking his hair and Otabek feels so suddenly warm and safe that he wants to purr. He settles his hands on Yuri’s hips for a moment before trailing them up his back to wind around him and pull him even closer, broad palms resting over the juts of Yuri’s shoulder blades. Yuri comes without complaint, still trailing the fingers of one hand through his hair. He squeezes his eyes shut; he can’t believe he’s being given this.

He has no idea how long they’ve stayed like that, Yuri so small and solid, comforting _him_ when Otabek feels like it should be the other way around. Yuri has dealt with the issue of presenting so much longer than he has. He has a grip on it, he knows himself and his body and who he is, while Otabek feels like he’s standing in the middle of a snowglobe someone has just picked up and given a horrendous shake.

He feels weak and Yuri feels good, standing quietly against him.

“I’m tired,” Yuri says eventually. 

Otabek tips his head up and gestures wordlessly at the bed. Yuri kicks off his shoes and socks, using Otabek’s shoulder to steady himself. He tosses his jacket to the floor and disentangles himself from Otabek to crawl up onto the bed. He doesn’t wait for further invitation to crawl under the mass of blankets and make himself at home. 

Otabek watches him, turned sideways on the bed, smiling, just a bit, to himself. Yuri feeling safe in his space makes every part of him feel good. Not just the alpha instincts, but the part of him that considers Yuri to be the best friend that he’s ever had, the person closest to him. He’s proud that this talented, gorgeous boy has chosen to make himself vulnerable to him. That he still trusts him so much.

“I can hear you thinking,” Yuri grumbles into the pillow, already blinking slowly.

Otabek reaches over and tucks a curl of hair back behind his ear. Yuri presses his cheek up lightly into the touch.

“I can’t believe you’re not afraid of me,” he admits, his disbelief at Yuri here, in his bed again, with all the ease of before, coming out before he can rethink it.

“Do I have a reason to be?” Yuri asks.

Otabek shakes his head. “No. Never.”

“Then shut up.”

Otabek huffs a quiet laugh and strokes his thumb over Yuri’s cheek again.

“I’m going to make tea,” he says, knowing his has gone cold, since it’s sat, untouched, on his bedside table. “You want some?”

Yuri lets out a quiet sound, shaking his head as his eyes shut. “Just come back.”

Otabek strokes his thumb over Yuri’s cheek, fingers curling around the shell of his ear before he stands. He takes his cold mug with him and dumps it out in the sink. He picks up Yuri’s shoes and sets them by the door, moves his backpack to the corner and sets his socks and jacket along with it. He has no idea how long Yuri intends to stay with him but he hasn’t brought much with him and his skates certainly aren’t in his bag. He doesn’t want to think about him leaving already, not when they’ve so much left to discuss, and Otabek simply wants him close, right now. He’ll take whatever Yuri wants to give.

The kettle begins to whistle and he hurries back to the kitchen to take it off the stove before it can wake Yuri. He lets his tea steep for a few minutes before padding back toward his bed. Yuri shifts when he settles in beside him, scooting closer, up under his arm, before going still at his side. 

He holds Yuri there while he drinks his tea and responds, one handed to a handful of texts from Katsuki, and another new unknown number which happens to be Nikiforov joining in the barrage of worry with far too many exclamation points. He lets them know that Yuri is safe, as he’d gone missing without a word, and that he is, in fact, out of rut and back in his right mind.

He reads Yuri’s texts as well. The demand for answers, turning to pleas, to threats of hopping a plane and coming for a face-to-face. Otabek looks down at the top of his blonde head and tightens the grip of his arm, allowing himself a small, cautious smile.

 

\--

 

When he wakes, Yuri is curled up at his side, Flura in the space between his legs, and Otabek is nearly upended by the sensation of déjà vu. He doesn’t remember falling asleep but he’s glad that he’d finished his tea before he had, because the empty mug is on its side against his hip. 

He trails his fingers over the fringe of Yuri’s hair, brushing it back from his forehead, and he’s overwhelmed, plain and simple. This boy is a hurricane and Otabek hadn’t expected to live unaffected at the eye of it all, but there’s no denying that everything has changed. He’s afraid but he’s also prepared to face down whatever might come.

Yuri blinks slowly at him, cheek smushed against his shoulder. He rolls onto his back, flattening Otabek’s arm beneath him as he goes, groaning and stretching. Otabek catches a stray arm before it can hit him in the face. Yuri rolls his eyes when Otabek kisses the back of his hand, but his face flushes pink and he doesn’t pull away. He turns on his side and tucks a lock of hair that’s come loose from his bun behind his ear. 

“So you’re an alpha, then,” Yuri says, voice rough with sleep.

“Seems so.”

Yuri rubs at his own cheek and then curls his fist into his hoodie sleeve and tucks it under his chin. “Viktor says my scent probably caused you to present,” he says, bluntly. Otabek thinks he may be blushing just a bit, now.

“It’s all such a blur,” Otabek says, pushing himself up slightly to lean against his pillows. It feels wildly intimate to be having this conversation while laid in bed beside Yuri, but he can’t imagine ever speaking about this and feeling at ease. And everything with Yuri feels like it’s peeling him open to expose him, regardless.

“Was it me?” Yuri asks.

Otabek shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know. I never paid enough attention to anything concerning alphas because I never thought I could be one. I tend to be a bit of an introvert, if you haven't noticed.”

“An introvert who puts himself out in front of the world when he’s on the ice,” Yuri points out, matter of fact.

He concedes with a raise of his eyebrows. “Point is,” he says, “I don’t know. I woke up, smelling you, and it was your scent, on one of my hoodies. I didn’t realize what was happening until I…” he trails off. He can’t possibly imagine explaining how he’d come all over himself, knotting up under his own touch, whining, practically crying, thinking about fucking Yuri.

Yuri is still looking at him, his expression curious but guarded. He clears his throat and gives Otabek a pointed look that clearly reads _continue_.

Otabek tries. “I wasn’t sure what was happening until I started to feel like I’d die if I didn’t get off.” It’s a lesser version of the truth, but the idea of telling Yuri anything more makes his palms sweat and his stomach churn with anxiety.

“And did you?” Yuri asks, though he obviously knows the answer to the question.

“For a week straight,” Otabek deadpans.

“Did you think of me?” 

“Yuri,” Otabek says warningly.

Yuri rolls his eyes, cheeks stained a light pink. “Viktor said my scent caused you to present _and_ triggered your rut.” 

Otabek rubs at his face with both hands. “Yura, please.”

“Tell me,” Yuri demands, but there’s a plea in it as well. Otabek doesn’t know if it’s for confirmation or approval or what Yuri is hoping for. He doesn’t know the endgame and it’s as frustrating as it is frightening.

He sits up entirely; he can’t have this conversation half lying down. Yuri copies him, blankets pooling at his waist, meeting his gaze head-on.

“I thought of nothing _but_ you,” Otabek admits, feeling the back of his neck start to prickle with sweat. For one horrifying moment, he thinks it’s his rut, back for one final, ill-timed round.

Yuri looks down at his own lap, face still aflame, but he looks pleased, almost. 

“So it was me,” he says.

“Do you want it to be?”

Yuri doesn’t look up; he starts picking at his fingernails in silence. He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and worries it. Otabek reaches over to prod at the corner of his mouth. Yuri lets his lip go and looks up at Otabek, surprised.

“Yes,” he says, belatedly.

There is a long, long pause between them. Neither of them moves until Yuri finally reaches for his hand. Otabek nudges back against his pillows again, pulling Yuri back along with him. He nuzzles up against Otabek’s side and feeds his arm over his waist, resting his head on his shoulder. Yuri has always been the braver of the two of them, and Otabek follows his lead.

“You’re still young,” Otabek murmurs as they settle back together.

He can practically hear Yuri rolling his eyes. “We’re not doing anything.”

“We’re not just friends, either, though,” Otabek says quietly, reaching up to scratch his fingers against Yuri’s scalp.

It’s a while before Yuri speaks again. “I’m not sure what I want. Besides… this. You.” He rubs his cheek against Otabek’s shoulder. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I hate alphas.”

“You like Nikiforov. You trust him. He knows what you are.”

“Viktor is a nosy ass. He shouldn’t know.”

“But you trust him. He’s your friend.”

Yuri picks at the seam of his shirt, poking at his side. “Yes,” he admits, mumbling it into his chest. “I don’t know, Beka,” he says, sounding entirely too uncertain for Otabek to take. He tightens his arm around Yuri’s shoulder and reaches for the hand tugging at his shirt; Yuri’s fingers are cold when they fit against his own.

He tries to bring the conversation back around to the crux of the matter. 

“Are you uncomfortable with me, now?” his breath rustling the flyaway hairs on top of Yuri’s head. 

Yuri snorts. “Do I seem uncomfortable?”

Otabek squeezes the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to do, Yurochka. What do I say, now?”

“Say you’ll wait for me to figure this all out.”

“I will,” Otabek agrees immediately.

“Tell me we’re not going to change.”

“We won’t.”

Yuri is quiet a moment. His voice is softer when he asks, “Do you want me?”

Otabek doesn’t hesitate because he knows his answer without question, “Yes.” When Yuri doesn’t prompt him further, he continues, “When we’re both ready.”

“Good,” Yuri grumbles, shifting around a bit before going still. Otabek can feel the tension in his back, through his hand, however. He waits Yuri out. “Beka,” he finally says, though it’s quiet and hesitant, sounding almost like a question.

“Yes?” he asks, keeping his own voice soft.

Yuri tilts his head up, putting his hand on Otabek’s shoulder and then moving it to his neck. “Kiss me?”

He sounds terribly young, and he looks it, too, when Otabek shifts enough to meet his gaze. His tongue flicks out over his bottom lip in a familiar, nervous move, and Otabek’s eyes track it. The hand on his neck is warm, and Yuri is tucked up safely against his side, right here in bed, where they seem to spend most of their time together. And Otabek is helpless to deny him.

He brings his hand up to cup Yuri’s cheek and tilt his head back so he can lean down and fit their mouths together. Yuri whimpers and Otabek’s fingers shake.

The kiss is slow and careful, touched by inexperience on both sides. He doesn’t want to assume that this is Yuri’s first but he thinks that it must be. Otabek has little more to go off of than Yuri does. Still, it’s nice. He flicks his tongue against the tip of Yuri’s and Yuri grips him tighter, pushing himself closer, squeezing Otabek’s neck until it hurts. 

It goes on for longer than he should let it, but he doesn’t have it in him to push Yuri away from him. It’s intoxicating to finally have this, to have this small taste of him and know that Yuri feels more for him; that Yuri wants him as much as Otabek wants Yuri. 

He pulls back before long, grateful that his rut is over and his dick has stayed soft. Yuri tries to follow his mouth and Otabek gives him another chaste kiss before nudging their noses together a few times. Yuri’s eyes flutter open just so that he can roll them.

“Idiot,” he murmurs affectionately. He tips his head up and bumps his nose to Otabek’s before he scoots back down to his previous position and makes himself comfortable.

He shifts his legs around, restlessly, under the blankets. His knees poke against Otabek’s thigh for a moment before Yuri snakes one leg up over his and settles them together. His breathing starts to even out and Otabek wonders at how exhausted he seems to be. Not that Otabek is complaining about being curled up in bed with him. Not at all. He leans his head down enough to press a kiss to the top of Yuri’s head and pulls him closer. Yuri comes willingly, wedging himself tightly against his side.

Yuri takes his hand and Otabek squeezes his fingers.

He feels excruciatingly vulnerable like this, completely open to Yuri and whatever he decides for them, even though it seems to be exactly what Otabek is hoping for. He hates to allow himself the hope of having this, of being allowed to keep Yuri this close to him, to be offered the chance to make him happy. 

To no longer see just a glimmer of possibility for the two of them. 

There is still a lot of distance to cross between where they are now and where he hopes they’d both like them to end up, but it’s all right. Otabek is patient and Yuri is worth the wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I have ideas for more in this verse, time and inspiration permitting. Comments and kudos are super loved and will be fawned over; I appreciate them all so much.


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